Working Faster in Articulate Storyline with Shortcut Keys
Each time I’ve taken a course for an Adobe program (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, After Effects, etc.), keyboard shortcuts were the primary method we were taught to do things. I taught myself Articulate programs long before I took those Adobe classes, so I didn’t think to take a “shortcut first” approach.
Lately I’ve been making more of an effort to learn shortcut keys in each program I use because they really do save time! Articulate Storyline 360 is the tool I use the most as an elearning designer so it’s high time that I learn its shortcuts.
While Articulate provides a full list of their shortcuts on their site, it isn’t organized in a way that I personally find useful. To save you (and myself) some time searching for the shortcut you need, I’ve created a PDF with only the shortcuts I use most frequently in my workflow and have grouped them by function.
Maybe you’re thinking you don’t have time to memorize a bunch of shortcut keys. I feel the same way, so let me share with you my strategy for layering them into my workflow. First, I choose one shortcut to use as much as possible on a given day or week (choose your own pace). The next day or week, I add another, and then another. That’s it! Eventually, these shortcuts become second nature to me — or at least the ones I use most frequently do, which is what really matters.
Keep the PDF on your desktop and open it while you’re working in Storyline, or print it out and hang it on your wall. Hopefully, it will help you work faster so you can spend more time coming up with great ideas and spend less time opening menus!
Note: If Storyline doesn’t have a shortcut for what you need, you can save actions to a Quick Access toolbar, which I don’t cover in this article. You can find more information at the bottom of Articulate’s list of shortcuts.